These
latter data, for the sake of brevity, are in somewhat statistical form.
A few further incidents, which I did not learn of or understand until
long after they occurred, are also related.
The accounts of weather conditions, of scarcity of food and fuel, also
the number of deaths in the camps before the first of March, 1847, are
verified by the carefully kept "Diary of Patrick Breen, One of the
Donner Party," which has recently been published by the Academy of
Pacific Coast History.
The following article, which originally appeared in _The California
Star_, April 10, 1847, is here quoted from "The Life and Days of
General John A. Sutter," by T.J. Schoonover:
A more shocking scene cannot be imagined than was witnessed by the
party of men who went to the relief of the unfortunate emigrants in
the California Mountains. The bones of those who had died and been
devoured by the miserable ones that still survived were around their
tents and cabins; bodies of men, women, and children with half the
flesh torn from them lay on every side. A woman sat by the side of
the body of her dead husband cutting out his tongue; the heart she
had already taken out, broiled, and eaten. The daughter was seen
eating the father; and the mother, that [_viz._ body] of her
children; children, that of father and mother. The emaciated, wild,
and ghastly appearance of the survivors added to the horror of it.
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